All USB cables are not alike

I bought a cheap (Nokia) USB cable to use at work. It seemed not to be charging the phone very quickly.
Today I did some tests. It does charge the phone from my work PC but not nearly as fast as the HTC supplied cable.

Generally, if I leave the phone plugged in but do some browsing on and off during the day, at the end of the day the phone is pretty much where it was, battery-wise, at the start.
With the HTC cable, it charges pretty quickly (i.e a couple of hours).

The data transfer rate is the same with both cables.

Is there a sure way of knowing what cable to buy to get the same performance? (Short of buying an HTC cable)

I bought a cheap (Nokia) USB cable to use at work. It seemed not to be charging the phone very quickly.
Today I did some tests. It does charge the phone from my work PC but not nearly as fast as the HTC supplied cable.

Generally, if I leave the phone plugged in but do some browsing on and off during the day, at the end of the day the phone is pretty much where it was, battery-wise, at the start.
With the HTC cable, it charges pretty quickly (i.e a couple of hours).

The data transfer rate is the same with both cables.

Is there a sure way of knowing what cable to buy to get the same performance? (Short of buying an HTC cable)

Click to expand...

There should be no difference, the 5V wires are just that, wires nothing in between. As long as they can take 400ma from the charger which is all the phone will allow.

I wait to stand corrected but I thought the max the phone will charge at is 1000ma (1amp).

The original mains charger supplied says 5 volt 1000ma.

Click to expand...

Would like to agree, I did some tests and found regardless of phone condition, On/Off etc the current delivered to the phone was 400ma. (With 5V applied to the USB power connections) I was working with a battery around 45% , possibly if the voltage level is less it may allow more current, but I was surprised that this figure remains constant regardless of phone function.

I've bought two only to find that they are only good for data transfer. Most annoying!!

There's also an issue with some car chargers which although they give the impression that they are charging, they actually aren't. Beware about relying on one on a long trip which you've not tested before!

I need a USB cable to charge with, but I need it to be about 50cm longer than the one that comes with the Desire (which I think is 1m). Can anyone post a link for one that will do the job? I'm unsure of what will work with the Desire.

There has been a lot of discussion on XDA about this. As I understand it all cables are the same but USB chargers are not. The official HTC mains/car chargers are wired to tell the phone it is plugged into a full power source and not into a computer.

If when you plug your phone in you are given the options of charge only, disk drive etc then your phone is charging at 500ma, if you do not get the options then you are charging at 1000ma.

I got a cheap one of ebay and used it today to charge off my work PC. I got 5% in 30 mins. The HTC mains charger is much faster, but I expected that, i'll test the HTC cable via the PC, but I used it once before and it seemed slower, but not as slow as the cheap one.

I actually have a MicroUSB that onyl charges the phone, it provides no Sync capability. It looks just like a normal cable, but the internal conductors are open circuit. I just keep this one on my HTC Charger now. All good!